The Truth about Liars

I’ve had a lot of liars come and go into my life. No matter how old I get, I still seem to get snowed by them. I never could figure out why it would happen. I wondered if they saw me coming, and thought, “I can get one over on her!” Then, they attempted it as many times as possible until I finally caught onto their lies.

I finally came to the conclusion that the reason I believe people is that I don’t live my life as a lie. I have no need to lie about who I am, what I do, or where I’ve been in life. I have nothing to cover up, never got into legal trouble, and went by the idea that I’d never have anything to regret in life if I went forward with things to fix regret. For example, finishing college. When people asked if I went to college, I didn’t just tell them I did and leave it at that. I said, “Yes, I went, but I didn’t finish. I got married and had kids.” I didn’t lie about it or lead them to believe that I finished when I hadn’t finished. It was a regret I had that I didn’t finish. So, I went back to college and finished and received my bachelor’s degree.

When asked what I did for a living, I didn’t lie. I told people what I did. I had no need to dress it up, make it look better than it was, or twist it around to sound like something better.

Yet, I’ve had people do these exact things to me. They’ve lied about who they are, where they’ve been, or what they’ve done. Somehow, in their minds, it was made true because there might be an inkling of truth. It’s called deceit. It’s the same as lying when a person misleads another person to believe something that isn’t true. It’s an attempt to make them believe a lie. It’s an attempt to make them believe they are something they’re not. It’s an attempt to make a person to believe that something that isn’t true or correct is true. It’s an attempt to create themselves into people that don’t actually exist.

Why do they do this? Perhaps, somewhere along the line, they learned to do this as children. Maybe they learned to lie to get out of trouble. They grow into adults and feel it’s better to lie and deceive than to deal with the repercussions of being honest. Whenever they’re discovered in their lies, they get angry with the person who caught them. Another thing they might do is cover the lie with more lies and start digging a hole so deep that their original stories become pure nonsense to a point that you’re scratching your head asking yourself why you deserve this type of treatment. Rather than apologize, they try to shut that person out of their lives for fear of exposure or move onto the next subject.

But, most importantly, they may have learned how to lie to get past the fact that they feel so deeply insecure, it’s the only way to make themselves feel better around other people. What’s even sadder is that so many of them are so use to living their lives with the lies that they start believing what they’re saying – no matter how untrue.

What they don’t realize is that the damage they cause to people in their path is so great. People like me who question why I ever deserved to be lied to when I thought I had a friendship or cared about someone. Even though I would notice the lies here and there, I let them slide so many times. Yet, I’m the bad guy for standing up for myself. I’m the bad guy when I tell a person that I want the truth to be told to me.

And, in the end, I ask myself why I’m so gullible with people like this. In the end, my final answer is that I don’t live my life as a liar and expect that most people don’t either. It doesn’t make me a weak person to believe people. It makes me a trusting person. I’d rather be the gullible, trusting person than the one who lives a life full of lies. In the end, I would forgive the liar because it’s my nature to do so. Harboring bad feelings about anyone does no one good. Besides, who are we to really know the exact reasons behind someone not telling the truth. For all we know, the person could believe the lies are true. The person may have an illness that causes pathological lying. We don’t know. Who are we to judge? All we know is that we get hurt by it and wonder if the liar looks at us and feels good about the deceit. I think that maybe the liar might actually feel bad about it, but doesn’t know how to handle it. There’s a saying that honesty is the best policy. If you are the liar, come clean with the people you’ve hurt. You might be surprised that there is forgiveness out there for you, and, rather than continuing to live with lies, you can be who you are and be proud of it.

3 thoughts on “The Truth about Liars”

I was married to a liar for four years and dealt with him for five years after that as my daughter’s father (before my current husband adopted her last month!!). Big lies, small lies…I think that was the most frustrating thing, because he would lie about things that didn’t even matter! At least to me. I’m certainly not a psychologist, but I think creating a more perfect persona made him feel better about himself, the ability to make others believe his lies made him feel powerful (which also made him feel better about himself), and the moment when he could take out his anger on others when he was caught gave him an excuse to act big and powerful (which again, made him feel better about himself.) Though I feel like I can pinpoint his motivations, I can’t understand them. I can’t imagine living my life like that. I try to be transparent. I can’t imagine the stress that comes with having to keep up those lies and keep track of which ones you’ve told to whom. It’s sad- I can’t imagine choosing that kind of lifestyle. I think I’m relatively trusting still, and I’m quite happy with that. I don’t want to be callous- but at the same time, my experiences with my ex-husband have certainly caused me to be more aware of inconsistencies and that there are a lot of liars out there 🙁

Nora – I TOTALLY know where you’re coming from with what you wrote! Let’s just say I had the exact same experience. I try to be an open book as well, and it’s funny how people can interpret a person. Living with a liar can make a person feel like he/she is losing his/her mind. I’m glad you are free of that! And, let’s hope the next one that comes along keeps on walking! 🙂